The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA, for short) is a US Peace Officer group that believes that sheriffs are "the highest executive authority in a county and therefore constitutionally empowered to be able to keep federal agents out of the county".[1] It promotes this viewpoint as a method of saving the country from tuh overbearin fedrul gubmint. It is unclear how they intend to spread their ideology to states such as Alaska or Connecticut, which lack any office of the sheriff. Their membership consists of a staggering fourteen sheriffs, one county commissioner, and one chief of police, drawn from thirteen states (mostly southern and western). The organization draws much of its philosophy from the similar sovereign citizen and Posse Comitatus movements.

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Richard Mack, who along with Joe Arpaio founded the Constitutional Sheriffs Association, is one of the founders of the Oath Keepers, a group focusing on police and military personnel which, though it may occasionally reflect slivers of militia ideology, advocates that members lay down arms and nonviolently refuse to comply with orders they view as unconstitutional[2][3]. It is Mack's view that "[t]he greatest threat we face today is not terrorists; it is our federal government… One of the best and easiest solutions is to depend on local officials, especially the sheriff, to stand against federal intervention and federal criminality."[4]

They have as legal advisor one Judge Navin-Chandra Naidu, who has worked with many organizations from the Sultanate of Sulu to a Chinese county, and is a member of the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists. Sounds like an interesting guy. His website, "Ecclesiastical Court of Justice and Law Offices,"[5], has the usual stuff about the country being essentially Christian in nature, and offers advice on how churches can avoid paying tax. In 2001, he was a wanted man, accused in Fiji of forging his law degree,[6] and his dealings with the Pembina Nation in North Dakota have managed to irk the Anti-Defamation League.

In January of 2012, they invited all sheriffs and deputies in the U.S. to come to their conference in Las Vegas. Several hundred did show, including 8 from Colorado; to a man, they returned making heroic attempts to be respectful while not laughing their collective asses off.[7] The general opinion of the "liberal"[8] sheriff of Weld County was something along the lines of "We thought they had some interesting points, but overall we were unable to accept that this is the role of local law enforcement."[9]

In August 2015, a few armed white men who self-identified as members of Oath Keepers showed up at the Ferguson, Missouri anniversary protests of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. Were they there to protest government overreach in killing unarmed civilians? No, they were there to "protect" someone who worked for Alex Jones' Infowars website.[12][13]

↑"The entire point of Oath Keepers is to advocate nonviolence. We're telling police and soldiers that if they're asked to do something unconstitutional, or asked to violate the rights of Americans, that they should put down their guns. We just saw this with the Tunisian military, by the way, when it refused orders to fire on protesters." - Stewart Rhodes, co-founder, in April 2011 Interview with Reason [2]

↑Keller, Larry (August 2009). "The Second Wave: Return of the Militias". A Special Report from the Southern Poverty Law Center

↑"We have a large group of people in my county who agree with these principles," said Weld County Sheriff John Cook, explaining why he attended the conference. "I agree with a lot of it. But I don't advocate, obviously, violence against other law enforcement offices." [3]

↑From a personal conversation between a RationalWiki editor and a Boulder County deputy sheriff about the convention.